Casino Royale – 4.75 stars

April 25, 2012
00s, 4 stars, James Bond
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Clive Owen seemed such a natural choice to replace Pierce Brosnan as James Bond.  His breakout performance in the small budget Croupier even had him sporting a tuxedo in a casino.  But Owen passed, the role went to Daniel Craig, and “Bond was back!”

Except, Bond wasn’t back.  Daniel Craig and the creators of his movies turned their collective backs on a bunch of Bond movie staples.  Gone were the ridiculous gadgets, women named “Pussy” and “Goodhead”, painful puns and villains with designs to dominate and/or destroy the world.  Admittedly, Mike Myers’s Dr. Evil killed the last trope, which is a shame, because I’m less interested in villains with mere monetary designs.  But the advent of Craig signaled the death of a Bond audiences had come to know and tire of.

Instead, Craig brought us a hard, lean and rough Bond, a killer, but a smart, quick killer.  It was noteworthy that the first chase scene in Casino Royale is not by car, plane or boat, but on-foot, a dizzying, physical sequence where Bond chases down one man.  The suave and debonair is gone, as is evidenced by a drink order:

Like George Lazenby in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, however, Craig is introduced as a Bond who falls in love.  We see another side, briefly, and then thankfully (I prefer Bond unencumbered), we see what he will be going forward (we didn’t get that option with Lazenby, who apparently thought he had a brighter future than Bond had to offer).

Paul Haggis wrote Million Dollar Baby and Letters from Iwo Jima, and he won the Oscar for Best Screenplay for Crash.  He also wrote Casino Royale, which is interesting, well-paced and modern as opposed to cute and campy.

Also gone are the bevy of beauties, with the Bond girl being, generally, the least dumb.  Instead, we get a quick-witted Eva Green, who is a match for Bond intellectually and thankful that she lacks his innate brutality.

Best, Casino Royale brought back the gorgeous locales.  Prague, Nassau, Montenegro and Venice are featured.

Attack the Block – 3.75 Stars

April 24, 2012
2011, 3 stars, Action/Disaster, Scary, Sci-Fi
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EXCLUSIVE: Here's An ATTACK THE BLOCK 2 Update, Straight From Joe Cornish

An alien drops into the middle of a South London mugging (5 public housing thugs are dispossessing a young woman of her belongings).  The alien is a cross between a wolf and Gollum.  The boys chase it down and kill it.  Apparently, it was well-thought of, because shortly thereafter, a whole bunch of these things come from space for revenge.  Good, scary fun, a few good lines, and tense action sequences, not terribly marred by some unnecessary suggestions of the poor plight of London’s youth, forced to mug and terrorize by the inequities of an uncaring society.

Glory Road – 0 Stars

April 20, 2012
0 stars, Drama, Historical
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Amazon.com: Glory Road [Italian Edition] : derek luke, jon voight, james gartner: Movies & TV

It is hard to find a worse sports movie than the hackneyed and overwrought Remember the Titans, but after Glory Road, I was almost wistful for the homespun wisdom of Denzel Washington and the beatific look on Will Patton’s face as racial understanding dawns upon him.

No matter what you may think of the delivery of Remember the Titans, and I think very little of it, with a few exceptions, it hewed however loosely to actual historical events. There was a high school football team in Alexandria, Virginia. The school was recently desegregated. The team did get a black coach and he did make the whites sit with blacks on the bus and the team did win the championship. Sure, the film exaggerated racial tensions, but that much is to be expected. It can’t be “feel good” if at first we don’t “feel bad.”

Glory Road is every bit as maudlin and formulaic as Remember the Titans (both films were produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, blast Motown, show the trading of racial culture between young men in the form of dance moves, and teach us valuable lessons about what’s “in here”) but it is also a perversion of history that goes way over the line.  Yes, 5 black men played on the 1965-66 Texas Western NCAA winning basketball team and yes, they were coached by Don Haskins.  This much is true.

But it wasn’t that big of a deal.  A decade before Texas Western won, the undefeated 1955-56 University of San Francisco team won the NCAA championship with a team that played four blacks — Bill Russell, K.C. Jones, Hal Perry and Gene Brown.  In 1958, the coaches’ All-American team was all black — Wilt Chamberlain of Kansas, Oscar Robertson of Cincinnati, Bob Boozer of Kansas State, Guy Rodgers of Temple and Elgin Baylor of Seattle.  In 1962, the University of Cincinnati started four black players when it won the NCAA championship.  Loyola University of Chicago started four when it won in 1963.

We also have the sports announcer screaming, “Who ever heard of Texas Western?”

A lot of people. Texas Western was a regional third place finisher in the 1964 NCAAs.

So, that sucks, but it gets worse.

The reason 5 black players got the start (and 7 played) was mundane – Haskins thought they were the best players.

Not so in the film.  Instead, we get some p.c. twaddle wherein Haskins tips his desire to make a statement to the team and the white players actually agree not to play so a larger societal point can be made.

How the screenwriter came to the conclusion that it was more edifying to make the achievement a gift from whites rather than earned by blacks, well . . . that’s for another day.

Wonder Boys – 4.5 stars

April 18, 2012
4 stars, Comedy, Drama
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I had dinner with a critic friend, David Ehrenstein, around the time this picture was released.  He said something to the effect of, “A movie about these people had not been done yet.  It was its time.”  He was right, but before getting to the film, I wanted to note that the folks who did publicity for Curtis Hanson’s follow-up to L.A. Confidential should have been lined up and shot.   The previews portrayed the movie as a screwball comedy with a bespectacled Michael Douglas playing a wise and ultimately grating character, a classier Weird Science with a bigger star.

Wonder Boys is nothing as it was presented.  Instead, it is a literate comedy of manners with the setting of higher education, and it is principally about the businesses of teaching and writing.  Douglas is a professor working on his second novel (his first, a successful work, was published seven years prior), which has ballooned to a deathless 2200 pages.  His agent (Robert Downey, Jr.) is en route to WordFest, a weekend of literary activities, to read the novel.  In the meantime, Douglas is dealing with one peculiar but gifted student (Tobey Maguire), one gorgeuous student, who also happens to rent a room in his house and who is coming on to him (Katie Holmes), and the chancellor of the department, with whom he is having an affair (Frances McDormand).  Bad thing upon bad thing happens, but within the very funny travails, Hanson develops strong relationships between the characters.  He also gives more than a glimpse into the soul of writing and teaching, and Douglas actually grows, and grows convincingly, given what could have been events offered solely for their madcap nature.

The film also makes great use of the city of Pittsburgh, which has always deserved better than —

The Iron Lady – 2.5 stars

April 17, 2012
2011, Drama, Historical
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The Iron Lady (2011) - Rotten Tomatoes

First, I really have no idea as to the historical accuracy of the movie. To the extent there are historical nits to pick, I concede.

Second, this is two films.  One, very personal and touching, speaking to the loss of a loved one and an individual’s weakening ability to remember, a great thinker’s capacity to articulate and rationalize.   Meryl Streep’s turn as a woman infected by Alzheimer’s is frightening, poignant and moving.

Third, it works less well as a political biography.  The young Thatcher is a simplistic spouter of conservative bromides.   As prime minister, she’s almost ridiculously “iron” with the men about her always clucking like nervous nellies.  Worse, particular challenges are handled via music video montages and newsreel footage. It lends a certain cheap and easy feel to the endeavor.  During The Falklands War in particular, she is the lone Joan of Arc amidst jelly bellies. Speech follows speech, with great, grand pronouncement. It gets silly.  We even have the obligatory review of the casualty figures and the personal letter-writing histrionics.

Fourth, Streep is beyond convincing in the role and when assessing the body of her work, the idea that she is not the finest actress in the history of film is laughable.  There is no Magic Johnson to her Michael Jordan. It’s not even close. And she only gets better.  As the nun in Doubt, she completely captured the nuns of my early education, and as Julia Child in Julia and Julia, a role that like Thatcher could have been hammy and overt, she is vibrant and real.

My Week With Marilyn – 4 Stars

April 15, 2012
2011, 4 stars, Drama, Historical
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This is a charming first love story, different in that the first love is Marilyn Monroe and her suitor is a third assistant director (a glorified gofer) on her 1957 picture The Prince and the Showgirl.  The picture co-starred and was directed by Laurence Olivier, who is played by Kenneth Branagh.  Branagh was fine and nominated, though I’m not sure deservedly so.  His primary posture is one of exasperation.

It is Monroe who exasperates Olivier, because she is tardy, skittish, unprofessional and seemingly over-handled by her method acting coach and her business manager.  Pills are used to control her.  Thus, she seeks companionship and escape with the gofer, played with wide-eyed innocence but occasional steel by Eddie Redmayne (Redmayne is a little distracting – he has lips that rival the collagen-induced monstrosities of Barbara Hershey, Meg Ryan, at al.)

Williams was nominated and deservedly so.  She’s a perfect confluence of beauty, sensuality, naivete’ and whore.  At times, she was so stunning that you could understand the entire Monroe worship.

Best, the story is sweet but not sugary, and economical.  It also has a great sense of time and sports some nice supporting turns by Dominic Cooper and Toby Jones as her weasel management and especially Julia Ormond as Olivier’s aging and jealous wife at the time, Vivien Leigh.  Leigh is obviously wary of Olivier working with Monroe which results in a great exchange with the smitten gofer:

VIVIEN

Of course, Larry would never leave me. (Pause) But, if anything were to happen, you would let me know, wouldn’t you?

COLIN

I’m sure he loves you very much.

There is a flash of sudden anger in her expression.

VIVIEN

Oh, don’t be such a boy!

COLIN looks shaken and she touches his hand in contrition.

VIVIEN (cont’d)

At least you still adore me, don’t you?

COLIN

Of course. Everyone does.

There is a wintry bleakness in her face for a second.

VIVIEN

I’m 43, darling. No one will love me for much longer. Not even you.

To the extent there is a weakness in the picture, however, it is implicit in the character of Monroe and not the film.  Monroe is so iconic as to be both beguiling and ridiculous.  Her end was tragic and elicits the syrup ladled out by Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind” (which can be dusted off and updated for a Princess Di and had Elton and she been friends, probably Anna Nicole Smith).  Luckily, we are spared the cruelties that lay in store for Marilyn, but the film does take for granted her absolute boundless and radiating talent.

It’s a tough sell.  Monroe was beautiful and seductive and had the ditzy blond bit down pat.  But had she not been such a notorious pain in the and piece of ass, vexing Olivier and Gable and bedding DiMaggio, Miller and two Kennedys, would she be the goddess of today or . . . Anna Farris?

Our Idiot Brother – 3.75 Stars

April 10, 2012
2011, 3 stars, Comedy
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Our Idiot Brother movie review (2011) | Roger Ebert

A ridiculous feel good comedy about a sweet, trusting stoner (Paul Rudd, so open he sells marijuana to a uniformed policeman who professes to having a bad week) forced to live at home with his mother and then with his witches brew of sisters (Emily Watson, Parkey Posey and Zooey Deschanel).  Hijinks and family drama ensue.

Admittedly, not a great sell job for this picture.  But the movie is carried by Rudd, whose innocence and good-naturedness are both attractive and believable.  There are also some pretty amusing scenes.  The drug bust is deft, and Rudd’s meetings with his jaded parole officer are also funny.  Deschanel, who plays the artistic sister who wants to be some sort or stand-up comic, is winning, and her performances in what appear to be a NYC basement bar have a real authentic feel (she is not funny and the crowd of 7 people watching her is 85% family).   Adam Scott, as the love interest of Posey, is also excellent.  I’m not sure there is a funnier guy in formulaic comedies than Scott (his asshole brother in Step Brothers is legend).

Unfortunately, Posey, as the unscrupulous celebrity interviewer (yet again, high strung) and Watson as the earth mother sister whose husband (an unpleasant Steve Coogan) is cheating on her are tedious cartoons, but once Rudd re-enters the movie, all is well again.

The film, however, is stolen by T.J. Miller as a stoner who replaced Rudd by taking up with his woman when Rudd went to jail.  Miller is a gentle soul, just like Rudd, and that they pair up at the end of the picture to start a candle making business is not a spoiler.  It just had to be.

The World is Not Enough – 1 star

April 3, 2012
1 star, James Bond
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The World Is Not Enough is the worst James Bond film ever made, worse than even late bad-fashion, Roger Moore duds A View To a Kill or Octopussy .  As camp and aged as Moore became at the end, Pierce Brosnan proved to be something worse – tedious.  He’s got two moves: a smirk and grim displeasure.

Still, Bond films are rarely deep character studies, so how hard can one be on Brosnan?  At least we get beautiful sights, jaw-dropping stunts, good gadgets, a certain clever patter, Bond’s ingenuity, gorgeous women and intriguing villains with grand designs.

The World Is Not Enough has none of these things.  It is set almost exclusively in the drab former Soviet Union (see exciting Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan!); the stunts are pedestrian (another ski chase, a ho hum boat chase, more travel in an oil pipeline); the gadgets are routine (Bond can make his car come to him like a dog); the repartee’ is awful; and, worst of all, Bond is no longer ingenious – most things just drop into his lucky lap.

Unforgivably, the women are forgettable.  Sophie Marceau is grim and Denise Richards is so ridiculously Charlie’s Angels, she holds no interest – where the hell are Jill St. John and Barbara Carrera when we need them?

Now, that’s a Bond girl.

The villains have no design, other than financial mixed with some revenge (almost as bad as in Goldeneye, when the whole movie centered around Jonathan Pryce getting tv rights in China).  Worse, the picture is accompanied by a relentlessly cheezy Bond theme-meets-drum machine.

Finally, Bond is again emotionally involved with a woman (that’s two out of four for Brosnan), adding to the tiresome nature of the whole thing.  Bond’s attachment to a woman is rarely a good sign, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service notwithstanding.

Brosnan played the part one more time after The World Is Not Enough, demonstrating even more urgently that the Bond series needed a new face.  I had urged Jeremy Northam or Clive Owen, but the franchise knew better when it tapped Daniel Craig.

Crazy Stupid Love – 3.75 stars

April 2, 2012
2011, 3 stars, Comedy, Romance
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Image result for Crazy stupid love

A nice ensemble “bromantric” comedy.  Steve Carell plays the schlub husband thrown over by the “wife in mid-life crisis” Julianne Moore after she flings with an office colleague.  Despondent, Carell retreats to the local singles bar to lick his wounds, where the charming, suave ladies man Ryan Gosling takes him on as a project, ala’ Henry Higgins.  Carell is soon quite the ladies man himself but still pining for his wife, while Gosling learns the merits of deeper love with the electric but gawky Emma Stone.

There are some glitches: Carell’s sad-sack/nice guy routine is getting a bit stale; the friends of the broken-up Carell and Moore and Stone’s lame-o boyfriend are ridiculously stock and unrealistic; Carell’s 8th grade son is a little too cloying and hip; and Moore is reprising her flustered role in last year’s excellent The Kids Are Alright.

Still, this is cute and mostly funny, and Gosling, who I have been very hard on for his work in The Ides of March (confused) and the wildly overrated Drive (catatonic) is the engine.  His repair work on Carell provides some of the best scenes, and he and Stone have very convincing chemistry.

Also, Marisa Tomei plays a one-night stand who ends up being a teacher of Carell’s son.  Tomei just keeps getting better and better looking and more charming to boot.  She can be very dark, as she’s shown in The Wrestler and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, but she’s also a deft comedienne, as she showed here and in Cyrus.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – 4 Stars

April 1, 2012
2011, 4 stars, Crime/Mystery
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Harsh, unyielding and spooky, David Fincher’s adaptation of Stieg Larssen’s first of his best selling trilogy (adaptations of all three have been made in Sweden) is intricate, engrossing and decidedly chilly.  Daniel Craig plays a Swedish journalist who has just been convicted of libeling a financier.  Another corporate titan (Christopher Plummer) summons Craig after having his background checked by an investigative firm.  The firm’s investigator is a ward of the state (Rooney Mara) who ostensibly works as an office clerk, but, in fact, is a genius of surveillance and investigatory technique.  Plummer entices Craig to investigate the 50 year old disappearance of his niece, and Craig eventually enlists the loner and outcast, Mara, to assist him.

Fincher’s strongest milieu is psychological crime.  Seven gave us the mastermind of Kevin Spacey as he offed his victims using the seven deadly sins as a guide.  Zodiac was an intriguing take on a real life case, the Zodiac murders in Northern California during the late 1960s, early 1970s, and while it bombed at the box office, only two movies appeared on more critics’ top ten lists in 2007.  Fincher can deftly keep a lot of balls up in the air with great precision yet still tells a tale you can follow.  The book provided a family tree chart in the preface, and given the number of characters in the family, I found myself referring to it regularly.  Screenwriter Steve Zallian has smartly excised the plot of a few people, but not many, yet I never found myself confused.

Mara is genuine as a troubled, anti-social outcast who teams up with Craig to work on the mystery, and they produce a strong and convincing bond (her nomination for best actress is merited).  The close of the picture, when she realizes she cannot have perhaps one of the few people who has shown her affection, is a gut punch.

The ending, however, is muddled, tacking on a financial windfall/scam to the resolution of the mystery.  Once you’ve witnessed the solving of a string of gruesome ritual killings and a missing persons case that goes back decades, a coda of fraudulent financial transfers is hardly satisfying and robs crucial minutes away from further character study of the family, some of whom get short shrift given the sweep of the story.

Another distraction is Mara’s progressively expert investigatory skills, which by the end of the film near those of a super hero (as Christopher Hitchens noted about her literary character, she “is so well accoutred with special features that she’s almost over-equipped”).  The more La Femme Nikita she becomes, the less your investment in her.

Be warned.  Like Fincher’s Seven, this film is both brilliant and disturbing.  Gruesome murders, rape, animal mutilation, and what appears to be an unbearably cold Sweden all await.  Not for the faint of heart